I wonder if your expectation of 8% dividend growth is reasonable. I recently did an analysis of 108 dividend stocks, and the median dividend growth rate over the past 3 years was 5.3%, and over the past 5 years it was 7.2%.

Over time, I've come to believe that it's just as important to diversify among investment strategies as it is to diversify among specific investment holdings. One can put a portion of their portfolio into slower-growth, higher-yielding stocks, and another portion into higher-growth, low or non-yielding stocks.

One can than allocate the relevant portions of their portfolio to these two different strategies. As just one example, someone who is older could allocate 70% of their portfolio to the slower-growth higher yielding stocks, and 30% to higher growth stocks. And vice-versa for someone who is younger. The advantage is not only the additional diversification -- it also allows one to maintain knowledge of candidate stocks in both the growth and higher-yielding categories.

I think it depends heavily on the type of college degree obtained -- having a college "education" per se isn't necessarily of value, and it can actually be a detriment in my own experience.

Too many college graduates: 1) have learned "what" to think as opposed to "how" to think, 2) believe that effort and good intentions count for more than actual results achieved, and 3) think that just because everyone has an equal right to an opinion (which is true), that means that everyone's opinion is equally well thought out and of equal merit (which isn't).

In my experience, the liberal arts graduates suffer the most from these three things -- because most of their professors suffer from them as well. All college degrees are not created equal, and employers (and indirectly society) recognize this. My parents -- neither of whom had college educations -- were in many ways "smarter" that a lot of the college grads I've met.

But many of the subsequent comments are little more than theory from "intellectual academician-types" (or wanna-be's), and precious few with the substance one gains from being in the real world and doing something that adds real value. Lots of commentary about what is happening, but few credible suggestions about how to deal with it in a changed world.

More proof of why the "liberal arts majors" are having a difficult time getting jobs, and why their response is to try to force the government (through their extreme liberal politics) to "redistribute wealth" to those whom the market deems add little value. The problem is -- it won't work. The government could take every dime from every US citizen, and it still wouldn't pay off the total government debt and unfunded liabilities. The only way to improve life for the less fortunate is to make the whole pie bigger, and the only way to make the pie bigger is to incentivize (and appropriately reward) those who work harder, smarter, and take more risks. This pretty much by definition means a disparity in incomes.

Why not study something that's actually useful in the real world, work hard, take calculated risks, create something new that actually helps people improve their lives -- and maybe even get rich (and pay a lot of taxes) in the process? I did, and I don't feel that I owe anyone anything. Although I do plan to give a sizeable portion of my assets to charity upon my demise -- assuming the government doesn't steal it from me for their pet causes in the meantime.

To paraphrase -- I think it was Woody Allen -- "Those than can, do. Those that can't, teach. Those that can't teach, teach gym. And those that can't teach gym, pontificate on Seeking Alpha."

Apple May Have Won The PC War, By Losing The Windows Battle [View article]

So what's the point of saying that Apple is the biggest personal computer maker, as opposed to the biggest tablet maker, or the biggest phone maker, or the biggest portable listening device maker?

Just more semantics that cause people to lose sight of those things that are really important. I'd much rather see a discussion as to what might happen in a few years when the current Apple product pipeline plan has been implemented, now that Steve Jobs is gone. That could give rise to some genuinely intelligent and insightful conclusions.

Apple May Have Won The PC War, By Losing The Windows Battle [View article]

This article is much ado about nothing. Semantics over real substance, like an increasing number of Seeking Alpha articles. Unfortunately, readers have to sort through these to find the truly insightful articles...

Way too much insider selling prior to the IPO was/is a major red flag, plus the incredibly low float. I was lucky to receive a small/tiny allocation in the IPO from Schwab -- when I read the Certain Transactions section in the prospectus, I decided to flip the stock about 3 minutes after trading opened.

The Immortal Portfolio: A 12-ETF Strategy To Beat The Market [View article]

Well actually, no. The whole purpose of having a portfolio is to include in it those assets which are NOT highly correlated -- so as to smooth out the returns of the entire portolio as a whole, hence reducing overall portfolio risk.

The performance of each asset class individually is of lesser consequence -- it's the performance of the entire portfolio that is important. As I mentioned previously, you don't need 12 asset classes because many of them are highly correlated to each other, so they they add little little incremental diversification to the entire portfolio -- just added (and unecessary) trading costs.

It's also essential to be able to design a portfolio that targets the specific level of risk that is desired by (and appropriate for) each particular investor, and then evaluate the portfolio performance for that level of risk to determine if the investor would simply have been better off with a portfolio consisting of cash and the total market that has the same level of risk.

A lot of what seems "reasonable" in this field isn't necessarily correct. Unless you have studied portfolio theory (and applied it in the real world), you are treading on thin ice.

The Immortal Portfolio: A 12-ETF Strategy To Beat The Market [View article]

I disagree. While backtesting isn't perfect, it's very insightful and will show that many (I daresay most) strategies that seem profitable are not.

Also the strategies need to be tested on a risk-adjusted basis, and for more than 5 years. It's also essential that the strategy be tested on a multiple rolling-period basis -- which is why you can't simply use your going-forward performance as a measure of your strategy's success, as the next 5 years may prove to be an atypical period.

Also, I doubt that you get much additional diversification from many of the 12 assets in this portfolio, as compared to a 6-7 asset portfolio which includes S&P 500, a Small-Cap Index, an Emerging Markets Index, a Bond Index, Gold, Cash/ST T-Bills, and possibly a REIT index. (I know this because I've reviewed the historical correlation of returns for these assets.) If you use the related indicies, you can get a data set as far back as about 1990-1995, or earlier.

The Immortal Portfolio: A 12-ETF Strategy To Beat The Market [View article]

Why not back test this portfolio (over rolling 5, 10, and/or 15 year periods) and show us the results compared to an equity index (since yor portfolio has only equities) -- and on a comparable-risk basis? The results would provide a good indication of the potential success of this strategy. You'd likely find ways to tweak it, and then go forward with your real-money portfolio.

A lot of portfolio strategies sound good "on paper", but most of them aren't in reality.

It's not just Jobs' unique vision and formidable design skills, it's also the fact that, being a founder, someone whom Apple employees eminently respected, and who had a domineering personality to the point of being "a nut case" (as one of his best friends once described him to me), he could demand that the company follow his every request -- and everyone followed.

None of the current senior management team will be able to do this, for the above-noted reasons. If you've ever worked in a Silicon Valley tech company (I have, including AAPL), you know that the employee culture is one where "process" is more important than actual results achieved, and where everyone's opinion is considered of equal merit -- regardless of the experience or background of the person providing the opinion. This was not Jobs' philosophy at all, nor will it change in Silicon Valley anytime soon, if ever.

This does not mean that AAPL (both company and stock) won't do well in the intermediate term -- it very likely will. But at some point in the future (possibly when the Jobs-created pipeline of products gets depleted), AAPL will start to become a more "typical" tech company.

In short, there really is no one who can replace Jobs. Even if you found someone with his vision and personality (obviously no small trick), given that person wasn't a founder, doesn't have the same track record, and isn't a domineering "nut case", he/she won't command anywhere near the same amount of respect from employees -- nor their allegiance.

Oops, I said something controversial about Apple again... Putting on my flack shield before the FanBoys read this...